An Ugly Jobs Number

Unemployment is back up to 9.1%. Felix Salmon finds no good news in the report:

If you do want to go beyond the headlines, things look if anything even worse: the average duration of unemployment, for instance, just hit another new record at 39.7 weeks; a full 44% of all unemployed people have now been jobless for more than six months. And on top of that, it turns out that the government’s statisticians were overly optimistic for the past couple of months: the payrolls numbers for March and April were revised downwards by 39,000 jobs.

Temporary factors, including supply disruptions from the Japan earthquake and tsunami, were a major factor in the slowdown. And it's just a one-month snapshot, never a good basis for broad conclusions. But, as the Times' David Leonhardt notes, this is consistent with five months of weak growth numbers. The economy just isn't creating jobs quickly enough to make up for the huge losses of 2009 and 2010.

Chad Stone graphs the new numbers. Pete Wehner resurrects the Carter meme the right so desperately wants to affix to Obama. If you want to know why I refuse to rule out the possibility of a Palin presidency, look at the chart above.